The fourth and final in a series of deep-dive guides on building Purposeful Organizational Pillars
🧭 INSPIRE
Why Most Goals Leave People Behind
I’ve watched a lot of committed, smart people resist data they didn’t ask for, about work they don’t know how to adjust, measuring something they didn’t define.
It’s not that they don’t care. In fact, almost always, they care deeply. It’s that the goals they are handed have no room for them in it.
In too many organizations, goals function as a reporting system that happens to people, not something that belongs with them. Results arrive late, defined by someone else, measuring what’s easiest to count rather than what actually matters. And the people doing the work, the brilliant, purpose-driven people who show up every day, are left waiting to find out whether any of it added up to something.
At Taylor Mill Elementary, I watched this play out in a way that was hard to unsee. Each year, not unlike many schools across the country, our teachers waited anxiously for state assessment results. They valued the information. But those results arrived well after the school year had ended (actually, the next school year was underway), measured a narrow slice of what we were building, and offered little they could act on by the time they landed. Individual impact felt just out of reach. Smart adjustments were always several steps behind. The goals existed, but the connection between daily work and meaningful progress was missing.
When we changed that… when we built goals that were co-created, measured more frequently, and captured a wider and more accurate picture of our impact… something important shifted. Team members stopped dreading data and started asking for it. Celebrations of forward movement became motivating. When we saw we were off course, we came together to make smart adjustments. The goals had become theirs. And that changed everything.
That’s the difference between goals that report on your work and goals that belong to it.
Goals that belong to your team do something more than measure progress. They make the work meaningful. They turn your mission, vision, and values from words into daily proof.
And that’s not the only story I have.
✏️ CREATE
The Framework
The initial problem we realized with our goal structure was the timing. The results of our high-stakes assessments arrived way too late to make any significant adjustments. They were informative in important ways, but it was like arriving at the wrong destination after a 10-hour road trip and the GPS telling you the next day where you made a wrong turn.
So we set out to create a system that was aligned to our mission, vision, and core values, and to those existing, mandatory assessments. We didn’t need something completely separate. We needed goals that were ours… co-created, more frequent, and wider in scope than a single annual test.
Horizon goals and progress markers were our answer. Horizon goals included the yearly state assessments and also incorporated longer-term aspirations, like becoming a national Model PLC School, typically measured on an annual or multi-year basis. Progress markers were the fun part. These were the more frequent checkpoints, measured roughly three to four times per year, that let us see where we were on our course and ensure we were working in a cohesive, interdependent way toward our vision. Importantly, they were explicitly tied to our vision language, INSPIRE, LEAD, EXCEED, so goals and identity were never separate things. Fun because they were completely ours. We could run them like mini-experiments, adjust them if they weren’t giving us the information we needed, and use them as a regular chance to celebrate progress and course-correct together.
Co-Create
At NKCES, it didn’t take long for team members, who were clear on our mission of CONNECT, GROW, SERVE, to start asking how they could measure their impact toward it. It’s exactly the kind of eagerness that’s music to a leader’s ears. But that eagerness from high-achievers can quickly turn into frustration if it isn’t addressed.
I didn’t have the answer, but thankfully I didn’t feel the need to. We had a team of brilliant, dedicated people who would help define the problem and create an innovative solution. What was unique was the context – a school and a non-profit. What was the same as Taylor Mill was the importance of co-creating the system of how we would measure our impact.
When team members have a voice in how the journey will be measured, they decide to contribute their best to ensure the team is living out their mission, through their core values, toward their vision.
Datas, Rituals, and Stories
I’d read Marcus Buckingham’s book, Nine Lies About Work, several years before and, as we were navigating how to capture and measure our journey at NKCES, one idea from it kept resurfacing. Buckingham reframes the approach to goals as a shift away from cascading goals to cascading meaning.
This is what we’d done at Taylor Mill without naming it outright, and it’s what we were wrestling with at NKCES. When I brought this learning to our team working on the strategic plan and goals, we used it as a springboard for what we would create… goals that cascade meaning.
As Buckingham discusses in this chapter, we thought through the role data, rituals, and stories played in carrying our mission. What did we already have in place that we could mark and reflect on? Where were there holes in our progress markers where we could ideate with our team on the best way to measure our impact?
Of course there were aspects of our work that were more easily measurable, often data we were already collecting. We didn’t want to let that piece go, and it came more naturally because this is the goals-world most of us experience on a typical team.
But the rituals and stories brought a richness to our goals that couldn’t be as easily captured. What were those rituals, the recurring things we led and participated in, that held meaning to us and created impact for those we served? We spent time discerning these, and the most important ones ended up as progress markers under one of our three goals tied to connect, grow, and serve — essentially our mission.
What stories were being told about our work, both internally to celebrate accomplishments and growth, and, arguably more importantly, what stories were our customers telling? This was exciting because we had actual documentation and evidence in the form of feedback, videos, and testimonials.
What came out of this work was a comprehensive strategic plan that, while not perfect, got at the big picture of what we valued and the smaller picture of how to measure our progress along the way.
And the most beautiful thing about this was that we regularly came together as a team… not just to review or restate our goals, but to collectively document individual and team contributions toward them. We used them as powerful, co-created tools to reflect, celebrate, and adjust. And this didn’t stay internal. We were able to communicate clearly to our board members and community… not only where we were headed, but how far we had come. That’s what cascading meaning actually looks like.
🌀 AMPLIFY
Ready to Do the Work?
Not unlike the other three preceding pillars, effective goals don’t happen by accident. Whether you’re building them for the first time or reimagining what you already have, well-crafted goals share three qualities:
Strategic — Aligned with your mission, vision, and core values while balancing both short and long-term objectives. Goals that exist in isolation from your other pillars are just checkboxes.
Measurable — Clear indicators of success that cascade meaning throughout your organization. Not just what’s easiest to count, but what actually tells you whether you’re making progress toward what matters.
Motivating — Challenging yet achievable, and co-created in a way that nurtures a genuine sense of ownership. When people help build the goals, they pursue them differently.
Download the Goals Worksheet to guide your team through building horizon goals and progress markers that are strategic, measurable, and genuinely motivating.
🧭 Download the Goals Worksheet
The Foundation That Holds Everything Up
Defining your goals completes the foundation. But completion isn’t the finish line… it’s the beginning of something more important.
When all four pillars are thoughtfully aligned and activated, make them:
Visible — Talk about them often. Integrate them into meetings, decisions, and how you tell your story as a team.
Actionable — Create opportunities for every team member to see their individual contribution within the larger picture. The connection between daily work and collective progress should never be a mystery.
Evolving — Revisit them regularly. Let them grow as your team grows. A foundation that doesn’t adapt will eventually crack.
There are many elements that contribute to a great team doing excellent work. But here’s what I keep coming back to, grounded in both belief and experience: when a team has these four pillars intentionally designed, and continually works not just toward them but within them, they can meet any challenge with productive alignment. These pillars are meant to function as a whole… revisited, internalized, and layered as a systematic, strategic foundation that holds up everything a team does.
And when a team is struggling, working hard but feeling stuck, putting in the effort but not making meaningful progress, you can almost always find the root of it hidden somewhere in these pillars.
That’s not a warning. It’s an invitation. Because if the pillars are where the problems hide, they’re also where the answers live.
This post is part of the Purposeful Organizational Pillars series. Read the full overview: The Power of Purposeful Organizational Pillars.
Melody Stacy is the Founder of Culture of Belief and creator of The 5-Minute Mentor. She has led mission, vision, and values work at two organizations — first as a school principal and later as Chief Academic Officer of a regional service agency — and writes about leadership development, team culture, and the practices that help people bring their best to their work.
#CultureofBelief
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